Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will be in Troy on Wednesday to discuss the work of his office's Homeowner Protection Program, which supports a variety of organizations that try to keep homeowners from losing their houses to foreclosure.

In the Capital Region, 740 individuals have sought help from HOPP-aided programs such as the Troy Rehabilitation & Improvement Program.

Statewide, HOPP's grant recipients — 36 legal services organizations and 56 housing counseling agencies — have served 23,760 New Yorkers since the program began sending out checks in October 2012, the attorney general's office said. It has resulted in 6,660 approved or pending loan modifications statewide, including 263 in the Capital Region.

Schneiderman has been a national voice on the damage done by the 2008 mortgage meltdown. Last year, the state's share in a national settlement between the Justice Department and JPMorgan Chase & Co. related to its practices in the crash was $613 million.

Scheiderman hopes to use a chunk of that money to expand the number of "land banks" that assist municipalities in buying abandoned or derelict properties to battle blight.

He's backing legislation to increase the maximum number of land banks in New York from 10 to 20.

The attorney general is also proposing legislation to force lenders to take responsibility for these so-called "zombie properties" when they're abandoned as opposed to when foreclosure is complete, and to establish a statewide registry of such structures.

The attorney general's office said its research shows more than 15,000 "zombie" properties statewide, an estimated 1,100 in the Capital Region.